Upstairs
by SavvyIthny
Summary: In the inn on the second night, Pol watches the thief.


T**itle: Upstairs**

Rating: PG

Genre: Missing Scene/Contemplation

Book: The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

Disclaimer: Not mine. Not that I would mind if they were.

Summary: In the Inn, Pol watches the Thief.

"_We went in and I ate, and before I was full, I fell asleep on the table.  
><em>_I woke up on the floor again, next to Pol's bed, but this time Ambiades and Sophos were in the room as well, sharing the bed on the other side of me. I contemplated the undignified sort of figure I must have made as I was carried upstairs a second time and I winced."_

The boy is eating now, total attention on the bowl of stewed lamb and onions in front of him. He stops his methodical shoveling only to alternate it with big bites of the chewy bread. The broth is dribbled onto his chin but he does not stop to wipe it.

Pol automatically checks the paths to both the main door and the kitchen exit before turning to his own meal. He doesn't expect the boy thief will cause trouble here; the allure of the free food will keep him close, at least until he gains some strength.

Pol turns to check on Sophos, who is paying less attention to his bowl and more to Ambiades, trying to engage the older boy in a discussion. He winces, slightly – while it's normal, and even desirable, for a boy of Sophos' age to indulge in hero worship, Pol doesn't think Ambiades is particularly deserving of it. The magus' senior apprentice is usually careful to say the right things, and he's got the makings of a solid swordsman, but there's something off about him, something Pol sees sometimes, fleetingly, behind his eyes. If the gods should have the humor to make Sophos a king someday, Pol thinks someone should make sure Ambiades gets sent far from the capital. Pol thinks he might be the one to arrange this, if the magus doesn't see why there's a need.

The frenetic, open-mouthed chewing beside him is slowing now. Pol glances at the thief to make sure he's not taking an opportunity to gauge the distance to the nearest exit. But instead, the boy is resting his head on one hand, slowly swirling a second piece of bread around the bowl to sop up all the gravy left behind after he inhaled the meat chunks. He lifts the bread, bites and chews – almost politely, a reasonable mouthful that he can close his lips around. He glances up at Pol, sighs, and starts chewing open-mouthed again.

Pol shrugs and turns back to his own meal. Across the table, the Magus has pushed his bowl aside to draw invisible lines on the table with his finger– probably the branches of one of his theoretical Classification Trees. Ambiades is answering his questions, but Sophos is watching the thief eat. Or rather, Pol realizes, Sophos is watching the thief's wrist as it rises and falls, where the bandage Pol wrapped around it yesterday is slipping down to reveal the raw wounds left by manacles. The patches are still moist and a bit weepy, but are starting to scab well, and should be dry and safe from further infection in another day.

It was probably lucky for the boy they'd taken him from the prison when they did. His sores were not yet truly festering, just irritated and blistering. Pol has seen men whose families took too long to pay ransoms after battles with less honorable opponents, whose sores were so deep you could see bone at the bottom, for whom the only answer, as the flesh turned black, was to cut off the hand. The boy may have shrieked like a girl and sworn like a fishwife about Pol's handling, but he will be keeping all his appendages. He is still strong enough to sit a horse, if not strong enough to ride all day without falling off, and while he lost weight during his confinement, he isn't wasted by dysentery or shitting blood down the inside of his trews.

He'll soon be strong enough that Pol will have to worry more about escape attempts.

And worry Pol will, for behind the wide-eyed innocence the boy affects in front of the Magus is … something. Riding down the road away from the city yesterday, Pol had watched the thief watching them all. Sizing them up. Taking in every detail of who they were and how they moved and what they meant to each other. Once in a while, something almost feral had flitted across his face. It is something different than the gawky, adolescent brashness that is surfacing more and more as they travel further from the city and its prison. The boy has the conviction of all youth that he is Meant for Better Things, but sometimes his posturing has an added air of calculation.

There are depths there, depths the Magus refuses to believe exist. The Magus – intelligent and self-satisfied as he is – is convinced the thief is a necessary tool, but only a tool. "He's good," he'd told Pol the previous evening. "I'm embarrassed to say I still don't know how he got that seal ring away from me. He's probably even fairly clever – an urchin like him couldn't have survived on the streets so long after his mother died without a good head on his shoulders. We need him. Don't worry so much."

Pol worries. Real urchins orphaned at that age usually wind up in brothels or the mines. No, someone must have taught the boy his trade – taught him so well he could enter the megaron, enter the Magus's very quarters, find the ring, and get out safely. To Pol, that bespeaks connections of some kind. The boy has friends, family – someone to escape to, if he can get away. And while the notes in the judiciary scrolls, which detail the thief's short, sad, childhood and his string of arrests for increasingly serious offenses, do not include any violent attacks, Pol can't rule out the possibility. And so he watches the thief.

He feels a sudden weight against his side and looks down. The boy is asleep, the chunk of half-eaten bread still in his hand. The arm holding up his head has gone limp and he is slumped against Pol's shoulder. Looking down at his tangled hair, Pol can see the lice that had survived the violent soaping and cold rinse of the night before and the warmer dunk this morning. Gently, he tips the head down, away from his own, though he lets it rest against his arm rather than the table.

The innkeeper's wife crosses the room to them. "Anything else, sirs?" She smiles as she sees that the thief has collapsed like a well-fed puppy, gazing at him fondly with a look Pol recognizes, for he saw it that morning when they left the previous inn – something about the boy makes mothers want to give him the mothering he looks like he has lacked. "Poor lad looks well done-in," she says. "Is he still hungry? I can get him more…."

"He's fine," the Magus interrupts. "Fine. Just tired after a long day. We'll get him out of your common room." He looks at Pol. Pol shrugs, and slides the boy's head off his forearm and onto his own, careful not to jar the bandaged wrist.

"I'll take him up," Pol says. He grabs the boy under the arms and turns him out, away from the table, bends to put his neck at the boy's chest level, and then lifts him up and onto his shoulder. He is light, even for his small frame, and Pol wonders again if the judiciary files were correct, or if the thief lied to the magistrates the first time he was arrested, if he was only eight or nine years old that day, rather than the eleven he claimed He isn't much heavier than Pol's oldest, a sturdy boy of ten himself.

Pol carries him through the inn's common room and up the stairs to the room he will share tonight with Pol and the boys. The thief does not stir or speak again as Pol pulls off his shoes and slips on the ankle shackle and makes sure the padding is in place

As Pol covers him with a blanket, the boy stirs. "Leave it, Sten," he murmurs. "I can walk." Pol pauses to see if the boy will wake fully and try to sit, or complain about the chain, or insist he be taken out to the necessary house across the courtyard, but he remains limp.

"No you can't," he murmurs, brushing a matted lock of hair away from the boy's face. "I'm putting you to bed."

The boy remains motionless, but responds to Pol's voice. "Can so. I'm fine, Sten. It's just twisted, not broken. Don't tell grandfather."

Asleep, the hints of his mother's homeland in his voice are stronger. Pol wonders if she sent her son to her family for a time, perhaps during one of her own jail stays. He shrugs again. It doesn't matter where he grew up – the boy is a thief. A Sounisian thief. And if the Magus says Sounis has need of his services, then his services Sounis will have, the boy's own desire or history be damned.

But meanwhile, Pol will watch him. And, perhaps, watch out for him.


End file.
